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Saved by Lucas Gillispie
on August 6, 2009 at 8:39:34 pm
 

 

Welcome to the World of Warcraft in School Wiki

 

This is a collaborative workspace for the development of instructional items for the use of the MMORPG, World of Warcraft, in a school setting.  Please take a moment to explore the various sections of the site and if you would like to contribute, please email Lucas Gillispie at lucas AT edurealms.com.

 

The primary focus of this project is to develop a curriculum for an after school program or "club" for at-risk students at the middle and/or high school level.  This program would use the game, World of Warcraft, as a focal point for exploring Writing/Literacy, Mathematics, Digital Citizenship, Online Safety, and would have numerous projects/lessons intended to develop 21st-Century skills.

 

-Lucas

 

Current Status/News

 

(7/14/09) - The project was just featured in WoW.com's 15 Minutes of Fame.  Peggy and I were interviewed by Lisa Poisso about the potential of WoW for learning.  Read more at:  http://www.wow.com/2009/07/14/15-minutes-of-fame-learn-to-game-to-game-to-learn/.

 

(7/14/09) - Helga Brown has been adding some fantastic lessons to the site, aligned to North Carolina's Standard Course of Study.  If you haven't seen them yet, check out Nordic Mythology.doc, Netiquette.doc, Beowulf.doc, and WoW E-conomics.doc.  Helga, you ROCK!

 

(6/24/09) - A number of blogs and news sites have picked up this project and on some, meaningful discussion is developing.  A section called, "In The News, Blogs, and More," has been added to collect these.  More stories are in the works.  Also, a Facebook Fan Page has been created to add another layer of networking.  Just search for WoWinSchool.

 

(6/4/09) - The interest in this project is growing daily and I'm happy to welcome several new folks to the Wiki!  I'm very excited to have been asked to present what we're doing with this project at the Games in Education Symposium 2009 in August.  I'm looking forward to meeting up with my guildmates from Cogntive Dissonance while there.  As far as my own implementation, I've drafted the funding proposal but am currently waiting on NC's Department of Public Instruction to release EETT allotments to the state's districts.  I'm currently in communication with stakeholders at the school-level regarding logistics and student selection for the program.  Very exciting! - Lucas 

 

(5/12/09) - Helga Brown, an educator in North Carolina, has contributed the first full-fledged lesson plan, Design A Quest Chain (.doc), aligned to North Carolina's English II standards.  It's amazing.

 

Added a Glossary.  As I read through the lesson ideas we've been developing, I realized that as gamers (and educators) we have LOL (lots of lingo!).  Take time to add to our growing list of World of Warcraft and online gaming terms.

 

(5/5/09) - Welcome RezEd community!  There's much work to be done, so feel free to jump in!  If you are looking for ways to contribute, browse some of the materials I've already added here or visit the "To Do" seciton.  If you know others who could make contributions, please have them apply for access and give a bit of identifying information when doing so, and I'll approve it as soon as possible.

 

(5/5/09) - I've adapted a lesson plan template to serve as a guideline for lesson development.  This is a suggested format as some lessons may not fit this outline.  For lessons that I develop, I will attempt to follow this template's format simply as a way of standardizing lessons.  To see the template, visit the Curriculum Overview page.

 

(4/3/09) - Initial tests on a Dell 330 went extremely well.  Despite the fact the system has an integrated Intel graphics processor, the game ran smoothly.  One of our district technicians and I tested the impact on the network and bandwidth.  The game has surprisingly little impact.  Below is a chart:

 

WoW Network Bandwidth Test

 

To test the traffic caused by the program, I closed down all other network using applications (IM, etc.).  I created a new character on a high population server (a dwarf), and ran him from the starting area to Ironforge (the dwarven capitol city).  The part of the chart indicated by 1 represents login and character creation.  The area denoted by the 2 is the initial upswing in data as I entered the capitol city.  The area indicated by the 3 is log out.  In other words, this chart shows only network usage by the workstation I used to test.  I presume that the spike when entering the capitol city was due to the crowd of other players there (the system has to download data about what armor they're wearing, character models, etc.).  After that initial load, it's primarily handling new folks who enter the city and chat.  For comparative purposes, opening GMail and sending a short message spiked at 45 k, well above the maximum experienced here.  Thus, even with a classroom with 15-17 players logged in at once, the impact on bandwidth would be minimal.

 

-Lucas

 


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